1972 WHA General Player Draft

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The 1972 WHA General Player Draft is a special draft session held on February 12th and 13th 1972 in Anaheim, California, by the World Hockey Association as a way to the 12 newly created franchises to have access to players to fill their rosters. There were two distinct events, i.e. a preliminary round and a main draft round, which lasted at least 123 rounds.

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In the preliminary round, representatives from every team were asked to write four names on a piece of paper; the names were announced aloud in front of all the representatives once every team had submitted its paper. Of the 12 teams that picked players on that day, 3 moved without ever playing a single game. Those teams kept their players. Those players, chiefly National Hockey League players, including many stars, were drafted as a way for WHA owners to secure contract discussion rights with those players. Few of these actually joined the WHA; those who did include Bernie Parent, John McKenzie, Derek Sanderson, Norm Ullman and Bobby Hull.

The second part was the draft itself, which spread on at least 123 rounds (in the case of the Los Angeles Sharks; not all teams drafted that many players however, and the majority of the teams picked about 80). There again, none of the draftees were required to report to the team, as the vast majority of these were bound by a contract to their current team, or were playing junior or collegiate hockey. It was again a mean to secure rights for contract negotiations. There was not a single player out of reach for this draft session, as the upstart teams drafted professional players from the National Hockey League and the various other North american professional leagues, but also amateurs from the canadian junior leagues, the NCAA and - a first - a fair number of European star players, mainly Swedes, Czechoslovaks and Soviets.